This bird I have
remarked myself, but never could make out till lately. I am assured
now that it is the stone curlew (charadrius oedicnemus). Some of
them pass over or near my house almost every evening after it is
dark, from the uplands of the hill and North field, away down
towards Dorton; where, among the streams and meadows, they find
a greater plenty of food. Birds that fly by night are obliged to be
noisy; their notes often repeated become signals or watchwords to
keep them together, that they may not stray or lose each the other
in the dark.
The evening proceedings and manoeuvres of the rooks are curious
and amusing in the autumn. Just before dusk they return in long
strings from the foraging of the day, and rendezvous by thousands
over Selborne-down, where they wheel round in the air, and sport
and dive in a playful manner, all the while exerting their voices,
and making a loud cawing, which, being blended and softened by
the distance that we at the village are below them, becomes a
confused noise or chiding; or rather a pleasing murmur, very
engaging to the imagination, and not unlike the cry of a pack of
hounds in hollow, echoing woods, or the rushing of the wind in tall
trees, or the tumbling of the tide upon a pebbly shore.
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